[ixp1200] Re: Running Vera software on newer boards.

[Scott C. Karlin]

On Wed, Jan 16, 2002 at 10:52:12PM -0500, Christopher Adam Telfer wrote:
> 
> We were considering trying to install the Vera software on ixp1200
> boards we recieved here at Purdue.  However, I noticed that the software
> was written for the IXP12EB evaluation board.  We, however, are using
> Radisys ENP-2505 boards : 
> http://www.radisys.com/oem_products/ds-page.cfm?ProductDatasheetsID=1055&ms=General
> 
> Has anyone managed to get Vera compiled and run for this board?  Some
> notable differences between the two seem to include a lack of jumpers
> and LEDs on the Radisys board.  This board seems to use the same BootMgr,
> although it seems to lack VxWorks.  (actually bad things seem to happen
> when you try to boot VxWorks)

No, I don't think anyone is running VERA on the RadiSys board.

I've taken a close look at the board (we have two of them here) and have
determined that VERA will need some changes to get it to work with the
new boards.  The lack of LEDs or jumpers is no big deal.  (There are DIP
switches which replace most of the jumpers.)  The two big differences that
will require code changes are the much larger SDRAM (256MB vs. 32MB) and
the fact that the IXP1200 is isolated from the PCI bus with a 21555 non-
transparent PCI-to-PCI bridge.

To avoid memory windows, VERA maps the entire SDRAM range directly to the
PCI bus.  For the 32MB evaluation boards, this is fine.  However, I don't
think we'll get away with that on the 256MB RadiSys boards.  (When we put
3 or 4 boards in a system, it eats up PCI address space rather quickly.)
We'll need to make a change where only a window of the SDRAM is mapped to
the PCI bus.

The 21555 non-transparent PCI-to-PCI bridge is a little trickier.  However,
since VERA already runs on the RAMiX PMC694 (PowerPC based) board with a
very similar 21554 non-transparent PCI-to-PCI bridge, VERA already has some
of the code needed to support the RadiSys board.

Scott